


Sea Changes

by glinda4thegood



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ending a Relationship, Family, Gen, Understanding Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-07
Updated: 2011-04-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 17:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glinda4thegood/pseuds/glinda4thegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Understanding yourself and who you choose to love, and why, is always a difficult journey. History, and family, can provide a good map for the road trip. Another Parauniverse story, with more normal than paranormal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea Changes

For eighty years the loveseat braced its back against the front of the summer cottage.

Iron balls shaped like clenched claw-feet dug into splintering tongue-in-groove planking on the wide porch. The claws rested in shallow depressions created by eighty years of steady, unrelenting presence. Swirls of flaking deck paint created shallow craters around the claws, lapping corroded metal with smudged color, evidence of past efforts at keeping the porch weatherproof.

Three generations of carved names etched the faded siding behind the loveseat. Youthful knife-artists had also notched the rococo wicker armrests, revealing a count of years in colored rings that started with earth-red wood then marked the decades in white, blue, green, gray, and back again to white. In eighty years the loveseat gained perhaps a half-inch of substance. Although its wooden skeleton had dried and lightened over time, the total weight of the chair was increased by several pounds due to layers of paint.

The extra weight of the paint-shell was matched, perhaps even exceeded, by sand and moisture invading the cracked green oilskin cushions that padded the seat.

Every October the loveseat was wrapped with canvas tarp, part of a vast winterizing ritual that transformed the beach to a silent village of cocoons and shutters.

Every October someone from the family said _sleep well_ to the cottage, when scarlet leaves fell, and sky and the water merged into pearly slate-colored foam that could have been breakers, or could have been clouds, or could have been the demarcation line to eternity.

 

 **Lillian sat up,** pulled on her sweatshirt and reached for her jeans. The fire had transformed a pile of driftwood logs into fat orange and black coals that tumbled and spat like angry kittens.

"See if you can find more wood that isn't too damp to burn." She poked Charles with her toe. "Aren't you cold?"

Charles sprawled naked on the old navy blanket spread in front of the fireplace. He was utterly at ease in his skin, self-conscious only because he enjoyed being admired.

"Nope. And there wasn't any more dry wood." He sat up, stretched, and frowned at Lill's efforts to encourage the fire. "Let it die. We've had a look around. We can drive back to Belham and find a hotel. Someplace clean and dry, with room service."

"That wasn't the deal." Lill fed a few remaining sticks into the coals. "We came to spend the night, Chaz."

A gust of fitful wind pulled a swarm of sparks up the chimney. The smaller sticks began to burn with crackling energy. For a moment Lill heard her own words echo in her head.

 _spend the night chaz spend the night chaz_

She hated calling him Chaz. He hated being called Charles. Early in their relationship Lill realized it was because he feared turning into his father, a charmingly vulgar, successful, and extremely predictable man. Chaz rhymed with jazz and sounded youthful and liberal and matched his aggressive brand-name style of consumerism.

"I didn't know the place was this far gone." Chaz wiggled into his jeans. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket. "It's a great property, but whoever buys it will have to start from scratch. Did you see how bad the roof was? The septic field probably needs to be replaced, the pump's dead, most of the windows have been leaking for the last decade. I'm surprised the whole porch hasn't given way under that dinosaur of a bench."

Chaz rummaged until he found an old water glass, cloudy with greasy dust, to use for an ashtray. He lit a cigarette then turned his back to her. Draped over the kitchen sink, staring out the rain-streaked window, Chaz looked like a commercial from those innocent years when a smoking man was the embodiment of sophistication.

Lill admired the pose. She had spent her formative years admiring the naturally masculine egocentric self-possession Chaz exuded.

Venus flytrap, Lill thought wryly. For some reason she never imagined Mother Nature as a feminist.

"It only needs to be lived in," she protested. "There's nothing here that can't be fixed."

 _can't be fixed can't be fixed_

Lill shivered. Her arms puckered into gooseflesh. "I thought you would understand. That beach is the first place you ever saw me naked. You gave me my first kiss on that old loveseat." She moved closer to the hearth, rubbing her arms.

Chaz turned and winked at her. He smiled to show his perfect teeth. The cleft in his chin deepened like an exclamation point. "You were seven years old. I was seven years old. Naked, we didn't look that much different. The present is definitely an improvement on the past."

 _new is better than old, junk it and start fresh_

It was his line of sales baloney, it was his mantra. The Fortunata family had made their money, continued to make their money, selling the newest and best: autos, trucks and RVs, entertainment systems and high-end furniture. Much of their clientele worshiped at the same shrine the Fortunatas did. New is way better than old.

Their families had so much in common. Three generations of Fortunatas and Gillisies enjoyed summers at this beach. Two generations grew up in the same small town before moving on in pursuit of larger opportunities. Lill's parents built a profitable chain of book stores. Chaz' parents fabricated a sales empire. Both Lillian and Charles were absorbed without complaint into the family businesses.

"We could spread the sleeping bags on the big bed."

Chaz shook his head. "If you're set on staying, I'm sleeping out here. As far as I'm concerned your grandparent's bedroom is just one more reason to raze this heap."

It was time to tell him, then. Lillian tried to find the words, but her mind was as empty as her heart had been for the past week.

"It gives me creeping grue just thinking about it." Chaz stubbed his cigarette into the glass. "I had nightmares for years after I saw the bed."

"You can sit through sequential screenings of all the Freddy Kreuger movies, but a collection of wood carvings gets you heebie? I've slept in there a hundred times, Chaz. The Grands carved this table ... the mantle over the fireplace. They made the headboard in their room together -- for fun. It was a hobby. They liked to do things together. How do you get _creepy_ from that?"

Chaz pulled on his sweatshirt with an impatient jerk, then reached for socks and shoes.

A lanky, quicksilver boy, Chaz stayed busy with swimming and volleyball during long beach days. At nightly bonfire gatherings he danced and flirted. Lill couldn't remember a time when she hadn't had a crush on him. That first kiss was the jumping off point for most of her adolescent fantasies.

When they met again after college, Lill ignored the fact that staying busy was his way of life. It was swimming and volleyball and dancing all over again -- with the addition of more adult activities.

"Dad says your Grands were witches." Chaz moved his mouth into a moue of distaste as he said the words. "Come on, Lill. It's not like you didn't hear the same stories I did when we were little. All those carved figures on that headboard. They say she made them to use like voodoo dolls."

"And some of the stories say they're actually the remains of people who disappeared, and aren't really carvings at all. Ooo-OOO-ooohhhhh!" Lill waved her hands in the air, producing a long-unused spooky sound-effect. "Mom had an art dealer offer her $20,000 for that headboard. On artistic merit alone."

Chaz stopped tying his shoe. "And she didn't take it?" He shook his head. "I hope you know who the dealer is. If you sell the woodwork separate from the property, you can probably get enough to buy one of those new condos at Bay Vista. You don't have to give up the beach entirely."

"No. I don't." Lillian's fingers slid into her jeans pocket and found a soft bunch of fabric. She could feel hard, smooth shapes through the cotton. "I think we've moved past the dating phase, Chaz."

It was ludicrous, the way real fear hardened his face and muscles into a defensive shell. "Lill? You aren't ..."

She couldn't help herself. Lillian started to laugh. When she could speak again, the expression on his face almost restarted the cascade of mirth. "I'm not pregnant. I'm not proposing, Chaz. I'm dumping you."

"I don't get it." Automatically he reached for another cigarette. Chaz lit up and squinted at her through the smoke. "It's about last Saturday, isn't it?"

Could she have underestimated him? Lillian felt her lungs grab an extra-large gasp of air to compensate for the sudden cessation of violent laughter. Did Chaz know she had overheard the conversation with his father at the Fortunata's dinner-slash-business party?

 _she wouldn't be a bad choice, boy_

The older Charles smoked with the younger Charles just off the edge of the patio, under trellises covered with rosevine skeletons. Intending to air out a stuffy upstairs bathroom, Lill stood with one hand on the window crank and caught the words rising from below, as if deliberately directed to her attention.

"She's got looks, she's got poise, she's got business smarts. But most of all she's got looks," Charles Sr. said bluntly. "You got a good eye, boy."

"I take after my old man."

The older Charles was on his third wife, an aerobics instructor in her mid-20s.

"Weird family, but most of them are dead now. She was such a skinny little kid. Who would'a thought?"

Chaz laughed. "Her mom was a looker. That's my secret. Always check out the mother. I could never seriously date a girl whose mother was a dog."

Lill pulled back from the window, face burning with outrage and an odd sense of shame. She had known about the blind spots in Chaz' personality. She hadn't realized the extent of her own.

"At the party -- you saw me in the garden?" Chaz made a face. "She kissed me, I didn't make the move. I couldn't be rude, she's one of dad's biggest clients. I was nice to her, then brought her back to her husband. It didn't mean anything."

Ah. Mrs. Vernay, the platinum blonde who trailed her foot over Chaz' leg during dinner, like some bad Dockers commercial. Lillian's chest contracted again, but she managed to keep the laughter under control.

"Actually, I didn't. We're too different, Chaz; that's enough reason for me."

"Then why this?" Chaz gestured at the fireplace and the navy blanket. "This is too bizarre. Women don't dump me. Why bring me here?"

"It's hard to explain." Lillian fingered the contents of her pocket. "Childhood dreams die hard, sometimes. You agreed to spend the night here with me. I knew you didn't mean it, but I wanted this last fantasy realized."

The fire was nearly gone, again. Over the sink the window rattled and creaked in response to the boisterous night wind.

"Let's go." Chaz took his car keys out of his pocket. "I like you, Lill. You're good company. It could have been serious between us."

"You're good company too, Chaz. But serious?" Lill shook her head, watching his eyes shift between her and the door. "I could never marry you, Chaz. I've got this rule of thumb: always check out the father before you get serious with the son. Your dad's been married three times? Each time to a younger woman. New is better than old, Chaz. How many times have I heard you say so?"

It hit him then. "So you aren't a spy, only an eavesdropper. I'm out of here, Lill. Are you coming?"

"No. I'll stay the night. I can walk down to the general store in the morning and hire one of the Scott boys to drive me into Belham," Lill said calmly. "I'm a big girl, I can find my way home."

"You're not sure where your home is," Chaz said spitefully. "You're good at acting like you fit in, but that's all it is. An act. You still think like a kid."

He slammed the door shut behind him. The big motor of his car turned over. A hail of gravel whipped away from the tires to hit the side of the house. The whine of gears shifting could be heard for a few moments, then faded with distance.

Lill picked up the blanket and shook it out. Chaz hadn't bothered to bring in the sleeping bags for her, but temperatures this time of year rarely fell below the mid-40s. There would be blankets in the cedar chest in the big bedroom.

Her fingers automatically found the light switch. Forty-watts dimmed by antique yellowed shades barely lit the room. Shadows stretched from cornice to crevice of the bed's tiered headboard, smoothing the intricate scene into an impressionistic tableau.

Lill climbed onto the plastic-covered mattress. She knew where the hidden switches were that lit small white lights behind the carvings. Holding her breath, she pressed the left-hand switch.

They were all there, the tiny dark figures that peopled the headboard. Farmers with rakes, women knitting and laboring over laundry tubs, bakers and butchers and candlestick makers, a trio of weavers ... each pair of hands was busy and productive, each miniature countenance intent and content.

Once Lill had asked her Grand Mother why there wasn't a cuckoo clock in the center of it all. The Black Forest influence seemed so pronounced that even now she expected to hear a pendulum's faint swish, the click and echo of a mechanical bird call.

"I don't know. We never seemed to need the extra time," Grand Mother had answered obliquely.

How could this scare Chaz? Lillian knelt at the headboard's center, under the figures of the lovers. A man and woman held hands, carved from two cleverly joined pieces of wood. Ranged behind them several children crawled and tumbled over wooden pillows chiselled with log-cabin quilt patterns.

 _think like a kid you think like a kid_

It may have been the most perceptive thing Chaz ever said to her.

Lill took the cloth bag from her pocket. She emptied the contents onto the lowest ledge of the headboard. Three pieces of colored glass lay in front of the lovers' feet. One red, one blue, one white.

A small box in her office contained another dozen or so pieces, product of years of childhood beachcombing. During moments of solitude or stress Lill liked to sort and finger their cool textures. After her mother's death in the spring, she had arranged them in the bathtub under an inch or so of water. Lill crouched until her knees were stiff and her back ached, scooping the pieces into her fingers, then letting them trickle back into the water.

"Water does funny things to glass."

How old had she been? Three? Four? Five? The Grands smelled identical, even their voices sounded the same, so Lill wasn't sure which Grand had first walked the beach with her on a storm morning and told her about glass.

"Junk and trash and some good stuff goes into the water, by design or accident," the Grand had said. "Water works on it, with help from the earth; smoothing, rubbing, changing."

Lill remembered the words clearly. She had listened while staring past the Grand's face, up into a pale sun through a wavy green lozenge.

Years of beachcombing taught Lill that green and white glass were plentiful. Colored glass was a rare acquisition. She had a few pieces of cobalt and ruby, one of champagne yellow. Her favorites were nearly identically shaped, quarter-sized pieces of glass that must originally have been ruby and cobalt. Wave-washed to cranberry and the creamy blue of a summer sky, both were textured like rare vaseline-glass. Both were roughly heart-shaped.

"Rare pieces, Lill," a Grand had said. "The glass must have been best-quality, and the water must have loved it."

Water didn't love every piece of glass. The white piece Lill carried in her bag showed this only too clearly. It was an irregularly shaped cloudy chunk with a pitted surface. Over the years many similar pieces had been returned to the water.

"Sea changes are unpredictable. It's part of the mystery, part of the adventure, Lill." That from Grand Mother, when Lillian was in her early teens and wrestling with sea changes of her own. "Walk the beach after storms. Keep the good, throw back the bad. Look long enough and you'll always find something of value."

Piece by piece, Lill returned the glass to the bag. It would be nearly dark, but she knew her way. Wrapping the navy blanket around her shoulders, she turned out the lights and left the bedroom.

Outside the wind alternately burnished or slivered the old wood siding. Lill meant to go straight to the beach, but the loveseat caught her eye. She sat gingerly, cold damp rising up to greet her backside.

Lill shut her eyes.

For a few moments it seemed the wind died and she could smell fish frying. Ice clinked in lemonade glasses. Crickets in the beach grass tattled that the temperature refused to drop below 70 even though the sun was long gone.

The wind caught a piece of siding with a howling, whistling sound, and past summer changed to present fall. As she stood, Lill's fingers caught against a gouge in the armrest. Another memory alternately heated and chilled her to the heart.

 _Lillian loves Charles_

Carved behind the loveseat. An eternity ago. Two colors ago.

Lill draped the blanket over her head like a hood, protection against the wind. She left the porch, walked several steps, then turned around. Viewed with a critical eye she knew many of Chaz' observations were correct. The house needed a new roof. It was time to replace the water pump and rework the drainfield. And the loveseat would look gorgeous wearing a coat of candy-apple red paint.

New wasn't always better than old. Old wasn't necessarily better than new. Lill followed the path to the beach thinking there were no simple answers or explanations for why water loved one piece of glass more than another.

 _keep the good toss back the bad_

Fingering the glass in her pocket, Lillian promised herself she would be there to walk the beach after the next storm.


End file.
